Washington: Many American-funded border police bases in Afghanistan have been abandoned or left unoccupied, inspectors from a US government watchdog agency have revealed.
The new report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction revealed that most of the facilities on three of the four bases that it inspected, each built to house 93 border police personnel, were either ‘unoccupied, or weren`t used for the intended purposes’.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the new finding has raised questions about the coming hand-over of security duties to local Afghanistan forces.
The disclosures shed new light on the US investment in Afghanistan`s security ahead of the planned withdrawal of most foreign troops by 2014, the paper said.
The US inspection work, carried out between January and July, found extensive evidence of shoddy construction.
According to the paper, Afghan border forces didn’t use one base, Lal Por 2, because it had no water supply.
A second, Nazyan, ‘may soon be uninhabitable’ because of shoddy construction that caused sewage overflow, the report said.
According to the paper, the inspectors didn`t examine whether the Afghan police units which were supposed to occupy the facilities were performing their jobs elsewhere.
Meanwhile, in a written response to a draft of the inspection report, the US Army Corps of Engineers, which awarded the base contract to Road & Roof Construction Co, an Afghan contractor, said it was working to fix the problems uncovered by inspectors.
ANI
